RFC 0062: Scheduled memory distillation — "dreams" (`memory.distillation`)

Summary

A "dream" is a periodic background run that distills recent transactional memory into long-term artifacts under an explicit token budget, then updates a retrieval index used at the next session's startup. openwop already has the halves — RFC 0012 defines host-managed _compaction_ (lossy distillation + the memory.compacted event), and RFC 0052 defines _scheduled_ run initiation — but nothing binds them, pins a _token budget_, or defines the _retrieval index_ that closes the loop back to startup. This RFC adds an additive memory.distillation capability that composes them: a scheduled compaction run reads memory (RFC 0004), applies a mandatory token budget, runs RFC 0012 compaction, writes a stable archive plus a memory-index manifest (a workspace file per RFC 0059), and emits the existing memory.compacted event with an additive optional distillation sub-object carrying budget metadata — not a parallel memory.distilled event.

Motivation

The feature set's product story: "an agent runs nightly memory distillation so it can synthesize learnings without manual prompting… cron @ 23:00 triggers a DREAM-ROUTINE with token budgets; output appended to archives and indices updated for next-day retrieval." The constraints section is explicit that token budgets are mandatory — "token budgets / context windows can cause memory retrieval failures if misconfigured; dreams must have explicit budgets."

Today RFC 0012 compaction exists and the examples/hosts/postgres host even implements runCompaction(), but: (a) nothing schedules it — it is trigger-on-demand only; (b) there is no token-budget contract, so distillation can blow a context window; (c) there is no _index_ the next run reads, so distilled output is written but not made discoverable at startup. The apps/workflow-engine demo neither advertises nor wires any of it.

The spec is the right place because "distillation ran on schedule, stayed within its token budget, produced a stable archive, and updated the index the next run reads" are interop + correctness guarantees an operator depends on for unattended overnight runs.

Proposal

§A — capabilities.schema.json: memory.distillation sub-block (additive, nested under memory)

   "memory": {
     "properties": {
       "compaction": { "...": "RFC 0012 (unchanged)" },
+      "distillation": {
+        "type": "object",
+        "description": "RFC 0062. Scheduled, token-budgeted distillation built on compaction (RFC 0012) + scheduling (RFC 0052). A distillation run is a compaction run with a budget + schedule + index.",
+        "required": ["supported"],
+        "additionalProperties": false,
+        "properties": {
+          "supported": { "type": "boolean" },
+          "maxTokenBudget": { "type": "integer", "minimum": 1, "description": "Largest per-run distillation token budget the host honors." },
+          "scheduled": { "type": "boolean", "description": "Host can initiate distillation on a schedule (requires host.scheduling, RFC 0052). Distillation MAY also run on-demand without scheduling." },
+          "indexEmitted": { "type": "boolean", "description": "Host writes a retrievable memory-index manifest after distillation." },
+          "tokenizerName": { "type": "string", "description": "Identifier of the tokenizer the budget is counted against (e.g. `claude`, `gpt-4`). The budget is best-effort-honest per this tokenizer, not byte-exact." }
+        }
+      }
     }
   }

§B — distillation run contract (normative, when memory.distillation.supported: true)

A distillation run — whether scheduled (RFC 0052 schedule trigger targeting the distillation handler) or on demand — MUST:

1. Read the source memoryRef's entries via the RFC 0004 read snapshot (deterministic input). 2. Apply a token budget — a tokenBudget (≤ advertised maxTokenBudget), supplied via the run-options.md reserved key distillation.tokenBudget (clamped to maxTokenBudget); absent ⇒ the host MUST default to maxTokenBudget. The budget caps _input + output_ token accounting, counted against the advertised tokenizerName (best-effort-honest). If the source cannot be meaningfully distilled within the budget the run MUST fail with token_budget_exceeded and write no partial archive (atomic). (token_budget_exceeded is registered in rest-endpoints.md by this RFC — it is present in the SDK error vocabulary but not yet in the spec's error-code list.) 3. Distill via the RFC 0012 compaction mechanism (carrying forward the SR-1 redaction invariant — a distilled archive MUST NOT re-expose a secret the sources had redacted). 4. Write a stable archive — the distilled output is an immutable, addressable artifact (byte-stable for a given source set + budget, so it is reproducible + auditable). 5. Update the memory-index manifest when indexEmitted: true — a retrievable summary the next session loads at startup. Per RFC 0059 §"Unresolved", the index is stored as a workspace file (MEMORY-INDEX.json); updating it emits workspace.updated (RFC 0059), not a bespoke index event. 6. Emit the existing memory.compacted event (RFC 0012) — extended with an additive optional distillation sub-object. The trigger field stays within RFC 0012's closed enum (host-managed for a scheduled distillation — the host owns the schedule; clients don't request it on-demand):

   "memoryCompacted": {
     "properties": {
       "memoryRef": { "...": "unchanged" },
       "trigger":   { "enum": ["host-managed", "client-requested", "both"], "...": "unchanged" },
       "sourceCount": { "...": "unchanged" }, "byteSize": { "...": "unchanged" },
+      "distillation": {
+        "type": "object",
+        "description": "RFC 0062. Present when this compaction is part of a budgeted distillation run.",
+        "properties": {
+          "tokenBudget":  { "type": "integer", "minimum": 1 },
+          "tokensUsed":   { "type": "integer", "minimum": 0 },
+          "indexUpdated": { "type": "boolean" }
+        }
+      }
     }
   }

Positive example. Nightly schedule (RFC 0052, 0 23 *) fires a distillation run with tokenBudget: 8000; it distills 412 entries into one archive using 7,611 tokens, updates the index (workspace.updated), emits memory.compacted { trigger: 'host-managed', distillation: { tokenBudget: 8000, tokensUsed: 7611, indexUpdated: true } }. Next morning's run loads the index at startup. Negative example. tokenBudget: 100 against a 400-entry corpus that cannot be distilled under 100 tokens → token_budget_exceeded { details: { budget: 100, minimumRequired: ~900 } }; no partial archive (atomic).

§C — relationship to the cohort

• RFC 0012 — distillation _is_ compaction with a budget + schedule + index wrapped around it; it reuses memory.compacted (+ the optional distillation sub-object), not a new event. RFC 0012's block + the existing payload are unchanged for consumers that ignore the sub-object.
• RFC 0052 — supplies the schedule; scheduled: true requires host.scheduling.
• RFC 0059 — the index manifest is a workspace file; its update rides workspace.updated.
• RFC 0004 — source reads use the memory snapshot; CTI-1 tenant isolation holds for the archive.

Compatibility

Additive. New optional memory.distillation sub-block; new optional distillation.tokenBudget reserved key; an additive optional distillation sub-object on the existing memory.compacted payload (its required array unchanged; consumers that only know RFC 0012 ignore the sub-object). The trigger enum is unchanged (distillation emits host-managed). token_budget_exceeded is a new error code (no existing code changes meaning). Hosts without the block keep on-demand compaction (RFC 0012) or no memory. No existing surface changes. No conformance pass invalidated.

Conformance

• distillation-shape.test.ts — memory.distillation block validates; maxTokenBudget positive; the distillation sub-object on memory.compacted validates. (Always-on.)
• distillation-token-budget.test.ts — within budget: memory.compacted carries distillation.tokensUsed ≤ tokenBudget; un-meetable budget → token_budget_exceeded, no partial archive. (Gated on memory.distillation.supported.)
• distillation-stable-archive.test.ts — same source set + budget ⇒ byte-stable archive. (Gated.)
• distillation-index-roundtrip.test.ts — after distillation the memory-index workspace file is retrievable + a workspace.updated event fired. (Gated on indexEmitted + host.workspace.supported.)
• distillation-secret-carryforward.test.ts — a redacted secret in source memory stays redacted in the archive (SR-1). (Gated; composes with the redaction suite.)

The four gated scenarios drive the memory-distillation seam POST /v1/host/sample/memory/distill (request { memoryRef, tokenBudget?, sources?, indexEmitted?, includeSecretCanary? } → { event, archiveChecksum, indexUpdated, indexFile? }), specified in host-sample-test-seams.md §"Open seams". A host advertising capabilities.memory.distillation.supported: true wires it to light them up; they soft-skip on 404 until then.

Alternatives considered

1. A new memory.distilled event (the author's first draft). Rejected — it duplicates memory.compacted (RFC 0012), splitting the compaction observability stream so an existing memory.compacted consumer misses scheduled distillations. Reusing memory.compacted + an additive optional distillation sub-object is the lower-surface-area path (the RFC 0058 cap.breached precedent). 2. Add "scheduled" to the trigger enum. Rejected — RFC 0012's trigger enum is closed and discriminates _who controls the trigger_ (host vs client), not _how the host schedules it_. A scheduled distillation is host-managed; its scheduled nature is evident from the distillation sub-object + the initiating schedule trigger. 3. A distillation pipeline independent of RFC 0012. Rejected — duplicates the compaction mechanism + its SR-1 carry-forward invariant.

Unresolved questions

1. Token accounting authority. The budget is counted against the advertised tokenizerName, best-effort-honest (±margin), not byte-exact. Conformance uses a reference tokenizer with a tolerance. Confirm the tolerance before Active. 2. Archive retention / GC. How long must archives persist; can distillation distill prior archives (recursive)? Proposed: advertise archiveRetention; recursive allowed, each level re-checks SR-1. Decide before Active. 3. Index format. MEMORY-INDEX.json (machine-loaded, normative) vs. a human-editable .md sibling. Proposed JSON normative. Confirm with RFC 0059.

Phase-0 resolution (architect ruling, 2026-05-25)

Per docs/autonomous-agent-runtime-plan.md §8 — Unresolved questions resolved (wire shape pinned; Active-ready pending schema + prose):

1. Token accounting authority → counted against an advertised tokenizerName, best-effort-honest; conformance tolerance ±10%. 2. Archive retention / GC → advertise archiveRetention (ISO-8601 duration); recursive distillation allowed, each level re-checks SR-1. 3. Index format → MEMORY-INDEX.json normative (machine-loaded); optional human-editable .md sibling. The additive distillation sub-object on memory.compacted is confirmed non-breaking (ruling A; additionalProperties:true); token_budget_exceeded is a new error code registered in rest-endpoints.md (ruling C).

Implementation notes (non-normative)

• examples/hosts/postgres already has runCompaction(); the reference wiring adds a budget guard, the archive write, the index workspace-file write, and the scheduled-trigger binding — emitting the extended memory.compacted. apps/workflow-engine advertises memory.distillation + wires the same. Depends on RFC 0052 (schedule) + RFC 0059 (index file). Gate RFC 0062 Accepted on RFC 0059 reaching at least a pinned workspace-file schema.
• SR-1 carry-forward lands at the RFC 0012 layer; no _new_ invariant, but the distillation conformance scenario re-asserts it.

Acceptance criteria

• [x] agent-memory.md distillation section (budget + stable archive + index + scheduled-trigger binding) + distillation.tokenBudget reserved key in run-options.md + token_budget_exceeded registered in rest-endpoints.md.
• [x] memory.distillation block (schema) + additive optional distillation sub-object on memoryCompacted (run-event-payloads schema). No new event type.
• [x] Conformance: shape always-on; budget/archive/index/secret-carryforward capability-gated — all five distillation-*.test.ts scenarios live + green against the in-memory host.
• [x] CHANGELOG entry under [1.1.4 — unreleased].
• [x] Milestone 2 — reference-host enforcement (Active → Accepted). The in-memory reference host (examples/hosts/in-memory) advertises capabilities.memory.distillation { supported, maxTokenBudget, scheduled: false, indexEmitted: true, tokenizerName, archiveRetention } and implements the POST /v1/host/sample/memory/distill seam: §B runs a budgeted distillation (tokensUsed ≤ tokenBudget; a budget below the corpus minimum fails atomically with token_budget_exceeded and writes no partial archive), produces a byte-stable JCS+SHA-256 archiveChecksum (same sources ⇒ same digest), writes a content-free MEMORY-INDEX.json workspace file via the RFC 0059 store on indexEmitted, and SR-1-scrubs the corpus before archiving so a redacted secret never re-appears. The memory.compacted event carries the additive distillation sub-object — no new event type, no new SECURITY invariant (SR-1 holds at the RFC 0012 layer). On-demand only: scheduled: false (no capabilities.scheduling on this host — a scheduled trigger composes RFC 0052 on a scheduling host); the host has no production MemoryAdapter, so distillation is seam-demonstrated.

References

• RFCS/0012-memory-compaction-profile.md — the compaction mechanism + memory.compacted event this reuses + extends.
• RFCS/0052-scheduling-and-time-based-triggers.md — the schedule that initiates a dream.
• RFCS/0059-agent-workspace.md — the durable layer the index manifest rides (workspace.updated).
• spec/v1/agent-memory.md — read snapshot + SR-1 / CTI-1 invariants.